[lolinder]

> I think it's almost an intuitive tenant of non-monopoly -- interoperability.

Interoperability with printer cartridges and game console controllers is different than mandated always-on servers.

In the former cases the only cost to the OG business is the opportunity cost of losing customers, and yes, that's just intuitively anti-monopoly rules.

But what is being considered here is the idea that a company should be obliged to allow another business to send them large amounts of traffic without paying anything, while simultaneously charging their own users for access to the original company's servers. This case is much less clear cut: you're essentially saying that, in the name of interoperability, any business that runs a platform is obliged to support some indeterminate number of other businesses at their own expense.

If you mandated interoperability but allowed charging the other businesses for server access, that would be a step in the right direction, but you're still mandating that the original business engage in a business relationship that they would rather not engage in. Still very much less clear cut than the hardware cases.

[MadnessASAP]

I don't think companies are obliged to provide free unlimited access to anything at their expense. However a foundation of the internet is client agnosticism. That is the service does not care what software or hardware the consumer is running, only that they are authorized to access the service.

Unfortunately Apple and a great many other companies have chosen (for almost universally anti-consumer reasons) to restrict the client *ware. Unfortunately for Apple et al. digitql information does not intrinsically reveal the origin of itself and so long as a given piece of software can present the right bits in the right order they can make use of the service.

It's a useless game that runs against the whole idea of the internet. If someone wishes to charge for a service thats quite alright, if they wish to publish a terms of use that prohibits certain behaviours on their service (spam) that's also quite alright. If they want to restrict access to only certain clients, they're legally allowed too, just don't expect everyone else to voluntarily go along with it.

[lolinder]

> If they want to restrict access to only certain clients, they're legally allowed too, just don't expect everyone else to voluntarily go along with it.

This thread is on an article discussing how the FTC and DoJ are investigating whether Apple should be legally allowed to attempt to lock out other clients. It's no longer a question of whether everyone should voluntarily go along with it, it's being escalated.

[MadnessASAP]

Sorry yes, was still working through my morning coffee and I had exceeded my token window by the end.

[tremon]

No one is obligating Apple to be the only party that runs iMessage always-on servers. That's a decision that's wholly of their own making.